EA - Effective altruism in the garden of ends by tyleralterman

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Effective altruism in the garden of ends, published by tyleralterman on August 31, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Huge thanks to Alex Zhu, Anders Sandberg, Andrés Gómez Emilsson, Andrew Roberts, Anne-Lorraine Selke (who I've subbed in entire sentences from), Crichton Atkinson, Ellie Hain, George Walker, Jesper Östman, Joe Edelman, Liza Simonova, Kathryn Devaney, Milan Griffes, Morgan Sutherland, Nathan Young, Rafael Ruiz, Tasshin Fogelman, Valerie Zhang, and Xiq for reviewing or helping me develop my ideas here. Further thanks to Allison Duettmann, Anders Sandberg, Howie Lempel, Julia Wise, and Tildy Stokes, for inspiring me through their lived examples. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal [.] should demand the denial of life & joy. – Emma Goldman, Living My Life This essay is a reconciliation of moral commitment and the good life. Here is its essence in two paragraphs: Totalized by an ought, I sought its source outside myself. I found nothing. The ought came from me, an internal whip toward a thing which, confusingly, I already wanted – to see others flourish. I dropped the whip. My want now rested, commensurate, amidst others of its kind – terminal wants for ends-in-themselves: loving, dancing, and the other spiritual requirements of my particular life. To say that these were lesser seemed to say, “It is more vital and urgent to eat well than to drink or sleep well.” No – I will eat, sleep, and drink well to feel alive; so too will I love and dance as well as help. Once, the material requirements of life were in competition: If we spent time building shelter it might jeopardize daylight that could have been spent hunting. We built communities to take the material requirements of life out of competition. For many of us, the task remains to do the same for our spirits. Particularly so for those working outside of organized religion on huge, consuming causes. I suggest such a community might practice something like “fractal altruism,” taking the good life at the scale of its individuals out of competition with impact at the scale of the world. If you’re a Blinkist or Sparknotes person, you can stop here. If you read on, you might find that everything written has been said already in the history of philosophy. This is a less rigorous experiential account that came from five years of personal reckoning. I thought my own story might be more relatable for friends with a history of devotion – unusual people who’ve found themselves dedicating their lives to a particular moral vision, whether it was (or is) Buddhism, Christianity, social justice, or climate activism. When these visions gobble up all other meaning in the life of their devotees, well, that sucks. I go through my own history of devotion to effective altruism. It’s the story of [wanting to help] turning into [needing to help] turning into [living to help] turning into [wanting to die] turning into [wanting to help again, because helping is part of a rich life]. There’s also an implicit critique of the Effective Altruist movement here. As far as I can tell, my dark night experience represents a common one for especially devoted, or “hardcore” EAs – the type who end up in mission-critical roles. If my experience is in fact representative, then I suspect it is productive (even on consequentialist grounds) for the movement to confront its dark night problem. Of course, there has been much discussion about burnout and mental health in EA. The movement has responded: there are support groups and more. But I doubt that ordinary mental health interventions – therapy, coaching, etc – are sufficient for hardcore EAs. Instead, I think that hardcore segments of the movement, who are bound by philosophy, might be helped by examining whether their philosophy is, in fact, in agreement, rathe...